Virginia Woolf - Mrs. Dalloway - 5

[StefanY]

Mrs. Dalloway



Mrs. Dalloway is not on my list of favorite books. That is not to say that it is poorly written; to the contrary, Woolf does have a writing style worthy of merit. It's just not my cup of tea.

Mrs. Dalloway was written in the beginnings of the modernistic movement in art and Woolf was writing in a style called "state-of-consciousness." This style was revolutionary in it's day, and many readers have embraced it. I however did not. State-of-consciousness takes the reader on a meandering journey through the thoughts of the characters as the story progresses. What we get, for example, are the thoughts of Mrs. Dalloway as she goes down the street to buy flowers. As she walks down the street, we learn about the task at hand, then her mind goes to an interesting sight that she sees, then she sees someone that she knows and her thoughts go to that person. We then jump into the thoughts of that person for a period and get their perspective on things and back to the original person or to someone else.

I found this style to be very confusing at first and it took me a good portion of the novel before I was comfortable with it.

Overall, Mrs. Dalloway felt too abstract and odd to my way of reading. The story itself is not bad, although a bit depressing. The language and amount of detail do an admirable job of creating beautiful images in one's head and is the main reason that I did not rate the novel lower than what I rated it.


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[PolarisDiB]

Mrs. Dalloway is not a Woolf book I'd recommend. Frankly, it's recommended to those people who want to know what it's like being the type of social people Mrs. Dalloway represents. The problem with that is that most people don't, at least as far as I can tell, relate to society that way much anymore.

Woolf's best novels, as far as I've found, are Jacob's Room and Orlando. The rest of it goes all over the line from tedious to annoying.

--PolarisDiB

[StefanY]

I may have to give one of those other two a try some time, but I think it'll be a while before I pick up Woolf again.

[OzBlackman]

I would strongly reccomend To the Lighthouse, which I have recently read. Though it confused me at first, I was soon drawn into the story in a way that I never had been before.